


Legendary

by SilverDagger



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Character Death, Fantasy elements, Ficlet, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:06:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4026226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die historic on the fury road.</i>
</p><p>(Fourth time's the charm)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legendary

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written.

He opens his eyes.

It takes some time before a name swims up from the depths - something chosen for himself, the sound of it set in his heart long before he earned it - and with it, the searing flash of memory. For a moment in his mind it's all smoke and guzzoline and gunfire, wild acceleration, and then - _four times._ Four times, the gates had swung open, and he's still here in the desert, in the still-smoking debris that used to be his ride, left behind in the wake of glory. It's harder to care now, though, than it used to be. He's not sure how much time has passed, but the sky has gone to twilight while he's been sleeping, stars strewn all shiny overhead like wreckage on the fury road, and he thinks he likes it here. He thinks maybe it wouldn't be bad to lie here forever, sun-warmed sand beneath his back and all those stars above him.

But even though it wouldn't be bad, he can't, because the next thing he sees is a silhouette against the darkening sky, and then there's a woman leaning over him, reaching out to help him to his feet.

He knows her. Scarred face framed by dusty black hair, rifle slung across her back. He knows her, and he saw her die, and there's not even any blood on her. Just dirt and dark eyes and the white-toothed glint of her smile.

"Come on, now, she says. "Up with you."

He takes her hand, and she pulls him to his feet like he weighs nothing at all, steadies him when he stumbles, the leather of her gloves rough against his bare arms. He feels - not wrong, but strange. Something's different about him now, in the stretch of his muscles and the swing of his joints, the way his body moves. Standing swaying on his feet, looking down at his hands and the scorched metal scattered around him, he realizes what it is. There's no pain.

There should be pain. There always has been before. It's been with him since before he earned his scars, rode to war with him and lay down to sleep beside him every night, and now it's gone, and with it the nausea, the slow, dull, aching fatigue of a mediocre death. He pinches his arm hard enough to bruise a half-life boy's anemic body, trying to bring himself back to himself. Feels like there's something he ought to remember, hazy in the back of his mind, the only other time he can remember the sickness retreating since it came on him those years ago. A different woman, hair like fire, the way she touched him with no intent to hurt. Yes. He needs to remember her.

"Is Capable..." he asks, his voice faltering at the sound of her name. He needs to know, but he doesn't want to ask - _does she live? Is she well? Did she die in glory?_

"She's fine," says the woman he's talking to now. "She'll miss you. Anyone with eyes can see that. But she'll do alright."

She sounds approving, but he frowns. "What d'you mean by that? I'm not going anywhere."

The woman looks at him for a long while, and this time, it seems like there's something a little sad hiding about the corners of her smile. But it vanishes quickly, if it was there at all, and she claps him on the arm like an old companion, then nods at him to follow her.

He has nowhere else to go and no one else to follow, so he lets her lead him past derelict vehicles and piles of scree, and then up the long rise of a hill, and as they walk, she says, "you know what a valkyrie is?"

"You?" he says. That _is_ her name, he thinks, the one she was given or the one she'd chosen. It's what the Many Mothers called her, anyway, those formidable old warriors. He hadn't thought it might be a title, but maybe it is, like _Immortan_ , or, no, like _Imperator_.

"That's right," she says. "Me."

"From Furiosa's tribe."

A slight shake of her head, another smile, as the wind picks up and the sky grows darker above them. They reach the top of the hill, and he realizes as the ground opens out onto a stony plateau that there's a bike there, sitting solitary, capturing moonlight. It looks like a real warhorse, all matte black and shiny, gleaming chrome. Beautiful machine. It's not the one she was riding before, but she touches it like it's an old friend, like something lost returned to her.

"Been riding with the Vuvalini a while," she says, "but I reckon it's time to go my own way." She turns to him and holds out her hand again, this time in invitation. "You're welcome to tag along. I'd say you've more than earned the right."

"Where?"

"My home," she says. "If that's where you want to go."

He isn't sure whether he wants to go anywhere yet or just wander aimless, night all around him, sand beneath his wheels. He wants to go back, too, past the fallen archway and down the long road to wherever they are now, the Imperator and the road warrior and the woman he won't ever forget. Can't do that, though, can he? He's figured it out, never been stupid. That archway's a gate and there's no stepping through it, not now, not from this direction.

"Four times," he says, with a laugh that doesn't feel like coughing, and he takes her hand. "Always been slow, a little."

"One time," she says. "You chose, and so did I."

She hefts him onto the back of the bike and then swings up behind him, revs the engine to roaring life, and he looks up at the bright spill of stars and wonders if they'll be traveling that road. And he leans into the wind and feels himself grin, anticipation sparking like ignition in the hollow chambers of his heart.

They ride.


End file.
